Quick thoughts as I listen - I'm not an expert.. but this seems like FUD.
"Rather than trying to fix the problems with Bitcoin, the community has decided to simply ignore them and create a different set of problems with the Lightning Network."
No... to "fix" the problem, necessarily would involve trade-offs.. trade offs no sensible person wants to make on L1.
Price volatility is not a problem.. certainly not one to be solved by engineering. Price is a reflection of the subjective valuations of network participants.
The reason bitcoin is the base layer of lightning is because bitcoin is fair, secure, valuable, decentralized etc. we can't just use "anything"
There are risks of custodial services centralizing on network.. that will be up to the users.. and to the extent that creates a problem, solutions to move away from custodial services will be developed.. it's still very early on. Plus its an open and permissionless protocol.
"both parties must agree to setup a channel, that is the opposite of permissionless"
No it isn't. That's called mutual voluntary exchange.
If there is a dispute between a lightning payment, it just settles back to the base chain.. not sure of the particulars here so I could be enlightened.
More decentralization of LN doesn't mean that a transaction will have to hop through more channels.. the opposite in fact. The network is much larger, with more nodes, and we get significantly higher successful routes now.
Government could attack lightning through calling them payment services/banks etc and regulation.. yes, we'll see if they do and if they can enforce it.
You say you're no expert, but great response. The one issue I wrestle with, and I've heard this from lightning proponents too, is the possible need for centralized, large nodes to permit reliable payments at a much higher volume.
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